Simple Hack to Enable Free iPhone Tethering On Any Carrier

by Sebastien on Jun 18, 2009

Just a few hours after Apple released firmware 3.0 to the public, some smart guy already figured out a way to hack the iPhone to allow free tethering on most carriers, including AT&T. What’s even better about this hack is that you don’t have to jailbreak your iPhone.

How to enable free tethering on iPhone 3.0?

1. On your iPhone, launch Safari

2. Go to the following website: http://help.benm.at/tethering.php

3. Find your country, select your provider, and tap “download”.

4. Go to Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering Bluetooth or USB

5. Done!

Is this legal? Well, not really… I suggest you don’t tether your iPhone too much using this hack as carriers have a way to find out and can very well overcharge you or simply disconnect you, as UK carrier 02 reportedly said it would:

Under those terms we reserve the right to charge customers making modem use of their iPhone or disconnect them.

Use with caution…

 

iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak Update

by Sebastien on Jun 18, 2009

The Dev Team posted an update regarding the iPhone 3.0 jailbreak. It seems the jailbreak is harder than they expected, but there’s nothing too hard for our favorite team of iPhone hackers.

We have two issues that we’ve been trying to resolve:

  1. There are new 3.0 complications with YouTube.app if you’re on a hacktivated (unofficially activated) device
  2. There’s a bug in Apple’s new version of asr that our custom IPSW’s are tickling and causing crashes on, on some devices.  (For the nerdy or curious among us, the details of that bug were tweeted by planetbeing a month ago.)

As of Thursday morning we now have a workaround for #2.  For #1, we’ll try our best to get it fixed but we may end up releasing a preliminary jailbreak in which YouTube doesn’t work for hacktivated devices, and then follow that up with a more complete jailbreak when we can.

As a reminder, this jailbreak is necessary to inject UltraSn0w, the payload that will allow you to unlock your iPhone.

 

Unlocked iPhone Owners Should Not Update to 3.0 Yet

by Sebastien on Jun 17, 2009

Just a quick post to remind every unlocker and jailbreaker out there that if you can’t live without your jailbroken and/or unlocked iPhone, you should not update to 3.0.

Updating to 3.0 will simply prevent you from jailbreaking or unlocking your iPhone, no matter if it is a 1st gen or iPhone 3G.

My advice to you: wait a few days for the Dev Team to release a new jailbreak for 3.0 and for UltraSn0w (the new app that will unlock your iPhone) to be released.

 

AT&T’s iPhone 3G S Upgrade Price Drop Is A Marketing Stunt

by Sebastien on Jun 17, 2009

Earlier today, AT&T issued a press release aimed at calming down its angry customers (I am one of them) who pre-ordered the new iPhone 3G S and were not eligible for an upgrade.

Previously, only customers who were eligible for an upgrade could get the iPhone 3G S at the best price. So if you bought your iPhone 3G last year at launch, like most of us, you theoretically wouldn’t be eligible for a full upgrade until December of 2009.

According to AT&T’s press release:

We’re now pleased to offer our iPhone 3G customers who are upgrade eligible in July, August or September 2009 our best upgrade pricing, beginning Thursday, June 18.

That’s incredibly nice of AT&T except that most 3G customers aren’t eligible until December anyways. Still according to AT&T, those eligible for their best upgrade pricing are customers “who spend more than $99 a month per line”.

My opinion is that this is just a marketing stunt from AT&T. If you read various iPhone blogs right now, they are all excited about this piece of news basically saying that AT&T redeemed itself and did the right thing. You should not be fooled by their good words. Unless you spend over $100/month on your iPhone plan, you will not be eligible for the best price ($299 for the 32GB).

For those of you who spend more than $100/month on your iPhone plan, you might be eligible. In this case, read the following information from AT&T:

If you’re one of the customers who benefits from this change, and you’ve already preordered from an AT&T store, we’ll adjust the price of the device when you pick it up. If you benefit from the change and you pre-ordered from AT&T online, we’ll send you an e-mail and issue you a credit.

If you pre-ordered an iPhone 3G S through Apple’s online store, your upgrade eligibility will be reassessed based on AT&T’s new upgrade policy for iPhone 3G owners. If you are eligible for the lower price, Apple will issue you a credit for the difference as applicable.

I called AT&T this morning and they confirmed I was not eligible. I was very polite and friendly with the customer service rep and explained her my situation. I switched from T-Mobile to get the iPhone back in 2007. I’ve been a loyal customer since then and I pay my bills as soon as they show up in the mail. I told her that I feel left out and that it would be a nice commercial gesture to credit the price difference (roughly $200) to my account. In the end, she credited my account of $50, which is better than nothing.

Still, I feel that AT&T is not doing the right thing here.

 

iPhone 3.0 Firmware Update Available For Download Now

by Sebastien on Jun 17, 2009

The new iPhone 3.0 firmware update is available for download through iTunes. To get it, simply plug in your iPhone into iTunes and click “check for updates”.

I will also update our iPhone Downloads page with direct links to the 3.0 firmware when I can put my hands on it.

 

Help! My iPhone 3G S Is Stranded In Kentucky

by Sebastien on Jun 17, 2009

Yesterday I wrote about how I was hoping my iPhone 3G S would be delivered on the 18th as per the information UPS tracking system was giving me. Well, reality slapped me in the face this morning when the tracking tool showed what I feared most: the package was put on hold.

The statuts of the package says that “the receiver requested a hold for a future delivery date”. I obviously didn’t make such request but you don’t need a PhD to figure out that Apple asked UPS to do not deliver iPhone 3G Ss until June 19th.

I am not the only one in this situation as many other site report the same thing.

 

Dev Team Demos UltraSn0w – iPhone 3G Unlock

by Sebastien on Jun 16, 2009

As announced yesterday, Dev Team member MuscleNerd did a demo of UltraSn0w, the new software unlock for the iPhone 3G (skip to 2.20 min on the video below). Unlike its predecessor YellowSn0w, UltraSn0w will unlock your iPhone 3G no matter what firmware, bootloader or baseband you have, as long as you have the new 3.0 firmware installed.

The actual program that UltraSn0w injects into the baseband to accomplish the unlock is the exact same one the Dev Team developed for YellowSn0w. What changed is that the Dev Team found a new “hole” to inject the unlocking payload.

During his demo, MuscleNerd successfully jailbroke his iPhone 3G and proved it by inserting a T-Mobile SIM card.

UltraSn0w won’t be available until Friday and like YellowSn0w, it will be downloadable through Cydia. Your iPhone will obviously have to be jailbroken and the Dev Team will release the necessary tools for that (QuickPwn and PwnageTool) soon.

Again, just to make this clear, there is no baseband downgrade needed. You can just upgrade to 3.0 tomorrow and wait for the Dev Team to push its unlocking tools and UltraSn0w on Friday.

Note that this unlock is only valid for the iPhone 3G. According to the Dev Team, this hack may be applicable to the new iPhone 3G S if it can be jailbroken, which should happen sometimes soon. Go Dev Team!

 

6 Reasons the iPhone 3G S Sucks

by Sebastien on Jun 16, 2009

If you read this iPhone blog on a regular basis, you know that I’m not a big Apple fan, and I take any chance I get to talk smack about them. There are enough fanboys, so someone needs to be the devil’s advocate… Last week I wrote about 7 reasons to buy the new iPhone 3G S and today I’d like to give a few reasons why the new iPhone 3G S is kind of a joke.

The Name Sucks

Lets’ start with the obvious: the name – iPhone 3G S. I had speculated about several names for the new iPhone and I really thought they would simply call it “iPhone”. You have to admit that “iPhone 3G S” is a pretty clunky name. If you were going to have a “S” in the name, why not simply call it “iPhone S”. It would have been a shorter and more “esthetically appealing” name.

The Design Is Boring

I think what I hate the most about the iPhone 3G S is the design which is exactly identical to the iPhone 3G. When I pay $560.16 for a new phone, I expect to have something that looks different from everybody else. Yes, the iPhone is a phone for the elite, I admit it. I kinda miss the days of the first iPhone, when people came to me and candidly asked me “wow, is this the iPhone?”. I was proud of it. Now everyone has an iPhone, and even worse, everyone has an iPhone that looks similar.

I was really looking forward having a revamped iPhone design. To those of you arguing with this, think about it this way. What would you say if BMW came out with the same car design twice, even though the engine was different? Any car critic would just roast BMW for their lack of creativity. Strangely, no one seems to care that the iPhone design is the same as the previous one.

The Camera Still Sucks

We went from a 2 to 3 megapixels camera. It’s better than nothing but it’s still 4 years behind every other smartphone, possibly more. The camera doesn’t even come with a flash. My old BlackBerry pearl did all this 4 years ago…

New Features Are Old News

Voice dialing, video recording and copy/paste were welcome as the messiah during WWDC. That’s BS if you want my opinion. This is just a software update, and once again, any smartphone on the market has had these features for years.

The Pricing Is Scandalous

The attractive $300 price tag for the 32GB iPhone 3G S is only applicable to new AT&T customers. While I understand the whole subsidize thing, I am really pissed I have to pay $560.16 for this new phone, especially when I see that the iPhone 3G S costs about 17% more than the G1 and 32% more than the Palm Pre over the course of a 2 year contract. AT&T is cashing in on existing customers, yet it won’t give throw them a bone and sell them the iPhone 3G S at $299?

No Tethering Or MMS At Launch

This is not specific to the iPhone 3G S, but rather to AT&T. AT&T has most likely been aware of these new features for months, and it still couldn’t manage to get its shit together on time. That’s a huge fail for AT&T who claims tethering and MMS will be available “later this summer”. At least AT&T won’t charge extra for MMS but I can’t see their future tethering plan under $30. I’ll stick to PDAnet for my free tethering.

The iPhone 3G S really is a non-event for existing 3G owners but the success of the pre-orders shows once again that fanboys are willing to throw money at anything Apple releases. If it wasn’t kind of my job to have the latest iPhone, I probably wouldn’t have upgraded.

I look forward to reading your comments and see whether you will upgrade or not.

 

iPhone 3G S to Be Delivered On June 18?

by Sebastien on Jun 16, 2009

Late last night I received an email from Apple saying that the iPhone 3G S I had pre-ordered last week was being shipped. I immediately hit the UPS link to track the shipment and I noticed it was being shipped from Shenzhen, China. When I first checked last night, it said the scheduled delivery date was June 17.

I checked again this morning and it says that the scheduled delivery date is now June 18. Either way, it’s ahead of Apple’s official launch day. Now the question is: if my iPhone arrives on June 18, will AT&T let me activate it?

 

iPhone 3.0 Unlock YellowSn0w Demo

by Sebastien on Jun 15, 2009

Dev Team member MuscleNerd sent a tweet a few minutes ago about an upcoming live demo of the YellowSn0w unlock for iPhone 3.0. The live demo will happen Tuesday night, most likely on Qik and should answer a lot of questions.

This demo should show how YellowSn0w can unlock firmware 3.0. I assume this unlock will only work for iPhones that currently support YellowSn0w.

 
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